


Two of Twelve

by milgrom



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Gen, karben
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:52:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/958002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/milgrom/pseuds/milgrom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of shorts, one shots and drabbles related to Leoben Conoy. These are not in any sort of chronological order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Long Division

"Guide the hand, the task is perilous, wanton and perilous. Ship function normal, FTL speed achieved - The martyr wrapped in pale skin, the sword & hammer the makings of God's mantle. Oxygen levels regulating, Four is moving patient number six-seven-ten. The one, the one, the end is the one. Divide by nothing, gain nothing. Together they are apart, individuals deemed worthy of praise, of salvation. Save her, save her, save her."

He listens, ever the dutiful student. The hybrid speaks of Kara Thrace, the pilot and the angel, the one born into the body of a woman. A great denier of her place, of the plan laid bare, a knife against the convergence of time's thread. His knees are in his chest, hands still cold from the resurrection water and skin set to prickle at the regulated temperatures. A Three wrapped his shoulders and he shrunk from her touch. Bony fingers scraped against a wound no longer present, a tingling memory of a military grade knife lodged in his throat.

"Meaning, always searching and never learning. The pattern and shape, they are the same, they will never change. Breathe, Four speaks, breathe and live. Seven and Three, the same in different skin, one lost another found, they knew the score, knew their end upon them. Engaging target, bearing nine and six, Two will hear and none will listen."

He is blessed, chosen and set in his role. They are his teacher, the hybrids. The ones who commune with Heaven. Their word is the very word of God, their mind touched His and were driven mad. Soon, he knows, the path will be his too. But not before his task is finished. Not before the test is done.

To be hated, reviled and scorned. To accept death at her hands, to love her again and again. To remember when no one else will. To love, endlessly and resolutely, to show nothing but the sanctity of Him. To forgive. The tenacious and verbose woman who was chosen, who is only a shell, a protective layer over an angel. To see her, to know her, to give her inches and offer his head upon a gilded block. What she gives, he accepts, even at his own peril.

"Yellow, blue, red - color and shape, vast and open, long and short, its the way, in and out."

He runs a callused finger along her jaw, lovingly and reverently. She is the one, his most trusted, the one who speaks the most. The others think him mad. He is, he knows it, he feels sentience slipping, giving way to the true beast's mark of insanity. But he knows the mind of God, he has been a traveller for so long. Through the stars and the vast space between time and the opera house. He has waded in the wide and trackless river, plucked images from past, present and future. He has shaped them, blessed hands and eyes have seen and received the message that God wishes them all to adhere.

"Booted feet, gloved hands, burned away and scatter to winds of old that smell of pine rushes and forgotten spring. Tides in and out crash on blackened shores. The path is lined with bones, dead, all dead and gone - forgotten. She will ascend, she will triumph over the fallen. She is the one, the one that is the end and beginning both."

_Kara Thrace, Kara Thrace_ \- a name like a mantra sputtering from his lips. Awake or asleep, it makes no difference. He loves her. He needs her. He craves her and wants her. He hates her too. He must always fight the want to recoil from her touch so rarely given. Each death he touts as a lesson is a nightmare that covers his skin in grime. Each is a vivid memory. A scratch of nails across his face, a pistol butt that cracks his teeth, a knife in his throat, his side, his chest. Each time different but the end of him is ever the same. And each time he wakes, he's a little less whole, a little less machine and a little more of God.

"She is destruction, the waning tide and the movement clutching to the spin. Convergence, souls amid the inky waters, lost they are. Cabin pressure decreasing - destination unknown. Find the color and receive the shape. Of things to come, of things long passed, winter and spring are in the hollow of her eyes."

His tribulation was given a name, one that stands to mark a driving force and spreading fire that leaves only ashes in its wake. It's a hard thing to reconcile when your lot in life is cast and given rigid restraint. There is no deviation, no foot or toe out of line. And its a pattern that repeats infinitely.

Another life, another time he was the captive and she the oppressor. Or they were lovers once, bound together by fate, caught in endless search for one another. Or she was his mother, he her father, her brother, her son. She was the dying leader, he the gatherer of ships. Each part remains and only the actors change. The dance is known to them all, the steps bound in the fate of their feet.

"She fears her own memory, her own skin. All of it wrong and misshapen, but only in her mind's eye. She can't see time for what it is, the ultimate lie, the carefully woven pattern of fine thread that she will break and let wrap around her throat. Guide her, hold her, comfort and love. God's will can never be broken. His plan is the only plan. The One is coming. He will cut the line before the end has come. The One is coming, heavy and dangerously malicious feet. The One is coming."

He turns his soulful eyes toward the sound of softly slippered feet. He smells of the false land they have claimed and enslaved. He smells of her, he wears the scent of Leoben's claimant. He stands, unashamed of his nudity or even the barest acknowledgement to the hybrid's caterwauling. She is afraid and that is testament to his theory. They are alive, just as he is.

"Are you quite finished with this one's ramblings?" The old man who craves a metal skin is flanked by six Centurions each with a single red optic focused on the frail form of the hybrid.

"What are you doing, Cavil? The hybrids are my responsibility."

"You are mad, Two. You have forgotten what you are."

"I am an instrument of God."

"No, you are an instrument of Man. An instrument they have played into folly."

"One will drive us back to the beginning. One will diverge and doom us all."

The Centurions move with precision, going straight for the cords that hold the hybrid to the ship, ship to the hybrid. He stands between them, knowing the full extent of Cavil's intent. He will not stop with the hybrids who speak. He will take them all under, drown them before they can really live.

"Move." Cavil speaks with a harsh tongue, one he loathes because it's wet and heavy in his mouth. The mockery and blasphemy he speaks must weigh down his soul. Leoben mourns the loss of the other, the One who bore reason and seeded the hope for union. This One is beleaguered by his form, constantly lamenting his prehensile hands and feet, the constant ache in his spine.

"No." He stands firm. If he is to die by his brother's hands, he would welcome it. They were the first, its only right he do so.

"It is dysfunctional. The ship will not trace the Colonial signature."

"Because she knows you are making a grave mistake. We need to seek peace, unity with the humans."

Cavil's laugh is booming and he nearly doubles over. Leoben knows but still stands in disbelief at the One's fiery passion for a failing war. After New Caprica, after the plague that had beset and destroyed their ship at the Lion's pulsar, after the signs that were becoming more and more apparent, he can hardly stand the the dismissal. The war was a mistake, on all levels, even the small ones you cannot see or name.

"Tell them to stand down, Cavil." Leoben warns with a glance and the looming Centurions still but for a moment.

"Reprogrammed, cursed, remade but not in God's fire. Burned alive, burned, burned, burned. The hand of Man comes with vengeance bred into its soul. The eyes of Man see mistake and give rise to our faltering. They will come with retribution, with all might in an iron fist. Bathed in fire, washed clean, sinners no more. The feet know the steps but not the order, One will fail while the Twelve live again."

The Centurion shoves him aside and Leoben hears a crack in the base of his spine. He winces and feels the reverberation of the hybrid's scream, the moment of reality for God's child just before her end. It hurts so much but his pain is tribulation, nothing handed down from on high is difficult when you know the truth and nature of Heaven. The room goes dark and the ship begins to shift without its guiding hand. He can hear the gunfire, hear the screams of brothers and sisters meeting their end at the hands of each other.

This wasn't the way. This is not what God had planned. This is Cavil, the One, orchestrating fate. In this moment, one of clarity and sharp pain slogging through his body, he knows. He knows and can see. Division and chaos, a crown of thorn and fire, a spark that will set ablaze the whole of the Colonial fleet. He will spread dissention within their own family, he will enslave their Centurion brothers, he will speak of promises he cannot keep and lead them all to the end they justly deserve. There is no second chance, not this round.

"Join me, Two." Cavil's hand is gnarled and wrinkled. Leoben searches his frantic, vast mind. It's there, he knows, the truth. Made to be the father lost, to speak the voice that held reason for one of the Five, for the one who loved her children most. "Help me put our brothers and sisters back on the right path."

"No. You're wrong. This … this isn't what God wants. We need to try again, Cavil. Set it right." Pain lances through him, travelling like lightning through his spine and neck. He's sure he cracked something vital and death is on its way. He can hear the chains rattling and the rushing waters of time beckoning to him. There is no resurrection, he knows, because this wouldn't be otherwise. He means to kill them all, to show them true death, to wipe them out when they will not align.

"God is dead."


	2. Internement

"Kill me now! End it, you frakking toasters! LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT!"

The angel made flesh is screaming again. She's tearing out her hair and foaming from her perfect mouth. She begs for death because she doesn't know it isn't time. That now is not the moment of her end. An end that will turn the tides for human and Cylon alike.

"Are you sure?" Six asks, eyes searching as they always are, carefully measured words and unwavering devotion just underneath it. "Perhaps you should leave her be today."

"Do you love Gaius?" He answers her question with another, one that shocks her and makes her step back and wear a face of insult. Her disgust is answer enough.

I walk past her, up the stairs and through the unchanging corridor. I have long grown past projection, finding solace in God's creation that is real and unimagined. I come to the bars that separate me from her, the cold iron that always seems between us. I pause, breathe and shut my eyes. When I open them again I wear a smile, the one she fears but can't shy from, the one she reviles and is drawn to all the same.

When I enter the room she sits with her back straight and her eyes have a predatory shine. She's contemplating all the ways she will kill me today, each more outrageous and violent than the last. I know it because I can smell her absolute hatred for me, can feel it permeate the air around us both. It matters so little, her hate, because soon enough she will know that I am right.

"Good morning, Kara." I say it easily, stepping over the vessel that was before, the one with his eyes still open and stunted blade still stuck in his carotid artery. "How are you today?" I ask her even when she stands, moving within inches of my face. She thinks to threaten me, but she is unarmored, unarmed and has choked me twice this week already. She's one for variety, to be sure.

"You don't get to ask me that." Her fingers curl and make fists she keeps tight against her side.

"Oh?" I quirk a brow, smile easily because I am with her, filling the space beside her. "Isn't it polite to ask after someone's welfare?" Ah, this game. It's always this game with her, where she establishes authority and shoves her bravado down my throat. It's just she doesn't need to. I'll love her when stars fall out of the sky, when man and Cylon do not exist anymore.

"You are my captor. It stands that I'm not doing so well at all." She doesn't smile but it's hidden in her tone. I love the way she breathes when she's angry. A sneer and cruel turn to her lips that begs for my teeth to find them. It's the way her clearwater eyes bore into mine that tells me of all her secrets tucked so carefully away. I would shout to Heaven, call upon God's own ear and demand he hear me. I am her messenger, I am the one who will show her the way.

But there are no words. There is nothing but the barest of inches between us.

"Have you had breakfast?" I ask because I know she hasn't. I know she's scratched and clawed at the windows and doors. It's a perfect replica of her apartment on Caprica and I built it just for her. My hands, the one she has sundered many times over, crafted this home for us. And she loathes me for it. She despises me to one end of the universe to the other.

"I am not hungry." She speaks as she follows me to the little kitchen, her long and weathered fingers white knuckle tapping on the counter-top. She keeps her tempered eyes on my movements – eggs, milk and a fresh loaf of bread. Simple fare, but better than she had among the people.

"Did you sleep well?" She hasn't. She's paced. She's prodded. She's mulled. She's stared at the ruined body she laid at her own feet. I wonder if it's because I never touch her. I never provoke her beyond the truth I am destined to speak. I love her and do not understand why she thinks I will harm her.

"No." Her body is rigid. She's on the offensive, lining me in her sights. She can feel her skin prickle like it does when she's about to launch. That excitement she had the first day of flight school, her officer commission and the shame of feeling just so when the colonies came under the slaughter. Fight, her body screams. Destroy is boiling the very blood inside her veins.

"How today, Kara?" Her fear shifts before my very eyes. "May I at least handle my," I can't choose the right word for what I feel about seeing my own death, the one I remember keenly. The one staring wide-eyed with blood dried upon his – my – teeth. " … Former self?" I crack a grin just to see if she gets the joke, but she wears a cheshire look and I know she's already chosen. There's no preparation and death has become an old friend.

I shut my eyes and feel the metal pan crack against my skull. Once, and I can hear her howl with a rage like God's old vengeance. The intensity of it rattling my bones. Twice, and the pain I feel radiates every inch of my body and I fall. Three times and the deep still waters are waiting, just as they always are.


	3. Spaces Between

_“At last, they’ve come for me. I feel their lives, their destinies spilling out before me. The denial of the one true path, played out on a world not their own, will end soon enough. Soon there will be four, glorious in awakening, struggling with the knowledge of their true selves, the pain of revelation bringing new clarity, and in the midst of confusion, he will find her. Enemies brought together by impossible longing, enemies now joined as one. The way forward at once unthinkable, yet inevitable. And the fifth, still in shadow, will claw toward the light, hungering for redemption that will only come in the howl of terrible suffering. I can see them all. The seven, now six, self-described machines who believe themselves without sin, but in time, it is sin that will consume them. They will know enmity, bitterness, the wrenching agony of the one splintering into many, and then they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.”_

\- - - - -

I sit with my knees clutched in my arms. I listen, because it speaks. It speaks, because I listen. 

I can hear her screaming behind the mirror. 

_Free me, save me, let me go, kill me or I’ll kill you --_

But I can do none of those things. Not until she sees. Not until she hears. 

An angel. A beautiful, terrible thing that I must guide because God has chosen my path. 

She is the string that holds the pattern in place, a fine silken weave so intricate and unfathomable. She is designed outside, fallen from the heavens, crawled from the blackest of pits. 

She will take my hand and show me the light. She will hold my face close to hers and whisper her love and I will hear it echo through time, neverending. It has happened before, it will happen again.

The last, I have seen, we were not enemies, but lovers. Joined across light years and through the decimation of billions. The pattern that never changes always features her guiding hands. They are mine to hold, mine to provide succor. 

She paces now, processing her surroundings, wondering who will come. She pauses, examining the table and chairs, sitting for a moment and then standing again. The discomfort contorts across her heraldic features and I am drawn, aching --

“Leoben?” 

“Leoben,” the Six speaks again. This time, it’s not Kara’s voice forming on the wrong lips, it’s the Six’s hand on his shoulder, not the angel still pacing in her cell. “It’s time.” She speaks in a soft lilt of a voice, one he’s heard a thousand times before.

He stands, his eyes still unable to pull away from his caged angel, golden wings with golden hair and the light of God so prevalent among her features. In dreams, he holds her close and she whispers her love along his skin and their breath mingles together.

Awake her righteous stare holds only scorn, a pure fire of hatred held only for him and all he’s done. She plots the way she will kill him today and he will provide -- by blade or gun, or her holy hands wrapped tight around his neck. It doesn’t matter the means she chooses because he will die willingly so long as it’s for her.

“How this time?” The Six asks, her eyes rung with black splotches and ash across her brow.

“She stabbed me,” his hands go to his throat. There is no wound, not anymore, but the feeling of the cold steel puncturing his skin and the blood dribbling out beyond the blade that Kara did not remove still remains.

“How many times are you going to go through this?” The Six seems frustrated; she’s not like Caprica Six, the Hero, the proclaimed Salvation of the Cylon. Caprica loved a human once, died for him and would again, Leoben is sure that’s true.

“Until she loves me back.” They say the greatest sacrifice is dying for the one you love. And he will, a thousand - _a million_ \- times over if it will only make her see the truth.


End file.
